


high places

by firstaudrina



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Child Neglect, F/M, Family Angst, Family Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Maia Centric, Parent Death, Wakes & Funerals, sorta gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 22:13:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13599492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstaudrina/pseuds/firstaudrina
Summary: Maia hasn't gotten back on the PATH train since the day she stepped off the platform with everything that mattered to her packed into two trash bags and a black Jansport backpack. She never missed anything she left behind. Or anyone.





	high places

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girljustdied](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girljustdied/gifts).



> For K, whose prompt was: "things you said when you were scared." Thank you very much for talking me through my whining and my first two attempts and giving me the idea that became this fic. You are the best, bar none.

Maia hasn't gotten back on the PATH train since the day she stepped off the platform with everything that mattered to her packed into two trash bags and a black Jansport backpack. She never missed anything she left behind. Or anyone. 

Sometimes she remembers folded over scraps of loose-leaf paper with bubbled high school writing on it, passed notes that she used to shove into the baseboard in her bedroom for safekeeping. She remembers writing _Maia_ with a heart over the _i_ on her mirror in lipstick. She remembers clomping down the creaking stairs for midnight snacks and leaning out her window when she couldn't sleep, looking at the moon. That girl is so far away that sometimes Maia thinks she never got up from the pavement, blood all over her neck.

Jace says, "You've been staring into space for fifteen minutes."

Maia starts like someone turned her ignition. She'd forgotten that he was here, or that she was.

"Are they gonna take that out of your paycheck?" he asks.

She frowns and looks down to find that the hand that had been absently wiping the counter had sprouted claws and left four deep scratches in the wood. "Fuck."

He reaches over to rub at the marks, less like he's trying to buff them out and more like he's following the whirling pattern for kicks. "What's up?"

"My mom died," Maia says, words dropping from her mouth like she's just bitching about the weather. She hasn't seen her mother in seven years. She's heard that in seven years all your cells turn over, which doesn't even take the supernatural into account. Maia is a new person. She's someone that woman never even met.

It's Jace's turn to stare. "I'm sorry."

Maia shrugs, jerky, and then she says, "I don't know if I am."

His expression clears and he seems to settle again, all his tension going away just like that. Maia hates it, but she appreciates it too. "Funeral?"

"I'm not going." It comes out harder than necessary, edged.

Jace raises his eyebrows. "Who said you had to?"

 

 

 

At some point after that, it's decided that Jace will come to the funeral with her. Maia isn't sure how, exactly, but it happens in between her telling him where it is and him saying something like, "Jocelyn was the only time I ever… She wasn't my mom, but it kind of helped. I'd never said goodbye before that."

Stupid trite shit.

They get on the train and then off so Maia can go home to change into a black dress. When she comes back down she's surprised to see Jace is holding a bouquet of bodega flowers awkwardly in his hands, bruised white blossoms wrapped in plastic. "Let's go," he says, to head off any commentary. "Don't wanna miss it."

The funeral is in Jersey City. It's not a long ride but Maia wants it to be longer.

She doesn't even pretend that she's going to tell Simon. It occurs to her that she should, that he would want to know and he would want to be here, but she turns her phone off instead of calling him. She'd given him the primer on Maia Ran Away From Home and sketched out the outline of Maia's Ex-Boyfriend Used To Hurt Her. But she can't handle even the thought of his soft, open face with its knitted brows, how sorry he would be and how confused. On the few occasions Maia has gone to the Lewis house for dinner, she wanted to take his family by force and make them hers. All those nice people with nice things to say. 

But they weren't hers. 

Jace was already wearing black, too, so that was helpful.

"I've never been to New Jersey," he says, conversational.

"Aren't you lucky," Maia replies.

 

 

 

The funeral home is a twenty minute walk once they get off the train.

Maia doesn't know how her dad got her number since she never called home or sent Christmas cards, never gave them so much as an update as to whether she was alive or dead. It had been a surprise for him to contact her at all, for her to listen to the slow rambling voicemail about the cancer and how it spread. No one had alerted her in time to say her goodbyes in person, so why now?

Maybe it was because she was the only one left. One by one, every Roberts gone.

She thinks of her dad alone in that miserable house and feels nothing, then realizes that home might not even exist anymore. Her parents could have moved without her ever knowing. But they must still be in the same area if the funeral is here, the same place they had Daniel's wake.

"Hold up," Jace says. He ducks into the shadows of a narrow parking entrance between two squat buildings and pulls out his stele, passing it over a rune on the back of his wrist. As one they all flicker and fade, every blackened mark on his skin blinking out of existence as though it was never there.

Maia looks at him.

"Well, do you want to spend the whole time talking about why you turned up with a guy covered in tattoos?" he says.

That would actually be the least uncomfortable line of questioning, but like the flowers, like the things he has not asked her, it is another surprising attempt at kindness that she doesn't have it in her to mock him for. Now, in his black sweater and motorcycle jacket, he looks like anyone. He looks mundane. 

 

 

 

Eyes widen and catch on Maia as she makes her way past the half-full folding chairs to the open coffin and flower arrangements center stage. She doesn't tug at the black corduroy of her skirt, though she wonders if it's too short. She bought it because it was cute and on sale, a black bib overall dress that she likes to wear a crop top under, usually. She's worn it on dates. Today she went with a turtleneck but she still feels overexposed.

Jace puts his hand on her lower back just in time for her to stop short in front of her dad, taking a half step back on instinct. The resistance of Jace's fingers buoys her forward again and keeps her spine straight.

"Maia." Her dad's eyes shift past her and alight on Jace questioningly. "And?"

Couldn't he look at her longer than that? 

Jace brings his free hand forward and Maia finds herself leaning into the curve of his chest and arm, recoiling into him. "Jace Wayland," he says. "Maia's boyfriend."

She would elbow him if no one was watching. 

Dad has no reaction to this other than to shake Jace's hand then return his own to his pockets. His suit is probably the same one he's worn to work a million times. It might even be one of the identical brown and gray suits that hung in his closet for Maia's entire childhood, smelling like Marlboros and those fresh linen dryer sheets Mom always bought. Maia has not moved close enough to know if he still smells the same. 

Her dad does not ask where she's been or how she's been living. He just says, "Come see Mom."

Maia grabs Jace's wrist hard, as retribution for that boyfriend bullshit, and drags him up with her. And then there she is, hands folded over her stomach, unpolished nails short and manicured like Maia remembers. Mom.

"Is this the same room?" Maia asks.

Her father nods, and then adds, "The burial is tomorrow. She'll be in the same plot."

Maia was surprised her mother didn't crawl in when they buried Daniel. "I'm not going to the cemetery." 

She could feel him looking at her then, but Maia was looking at her mother, feeling so tight she might crack Jace's bones in her grip. 

"Come to the house," Dad says. 

Maia turns away. "Fine."

 

 

 

Maia itches in the car ride over and the house — the same house, as it turns out — isn't much better, packed with people she had chosen to erase. Aunts and uncles and cousins who eyeball Jace with interest and stare blankly when Maia allows them to have the spare details of her life: bartender, online courses, marine biology. The neighbors are even there with their kids, kids Maia went to high school with. 

There are no pictures of Maia in the house that Daniel is not also in. His solo school photo stands proudly on the mantelpiece, his grin standing out against the velvetized blue background, but Maia's is nowhere to be found. Instead she is a child peeking around her mother's skirt in one, or an angsty tween radiating discomfort with Daniel's arm looped around her. Maia turns the picture facedown. 

She moves through the kitchen and into the hall, noting the alternating penned lines indicating hers and Daniel's growth on the wall. It was not painted over. The tight feeling in her chest hasn't eased but it's not the kind of tension that comes from holding in tears. Right now if she opened her lips, she would scream.

"Maia."

She turns to snarl something but it's only Jace, who she had abandoned to a gaggle of aunties some time ago. She must look wild or desperate or ready to snap, because Jace unthinkingly twists the knob of the coat closet under the stairs and ushers them both inside. This is a bad decision, because as soon as the door shuts and the light clicks on, Maia feels like she's gulping air and there isn't enough. 

"I can't, I can't," she says, but Jace tries to soothe her, rubs her arms and catches her hands.

"It's okay," he says. "We can leave, we don't have to stay —"

"No," she says, "I don't like small spaces, I — My brother —"

When Maia was really small, both in age and size, she had loved hide and seek. She would fold herself into the tiniest spots with a book and be happy for hours. This closet was one of the best, especially when it was cold out. She would bury herself in the coats, get warm and let them muffle the sounds of the rest of the house. But once Daniel realized he could lock her in from the outside that was all over. Once she cried until she hiccupped because he wouldn't let her out, never did until right before their parents got home from work. No one ever believed Maia, because Daniel was perfect. 

She'd tried other hiding places, but Daniel always found her.

Jace goes to open the door again but Maia is torn: she doesn't want to be in here, air thinning, but she doesn't want to be out _there_ either, not like this. They can't see her like this, they can't think she feels anything. "Stop, stop."

She clutches Jace's arms, sweater soft under her clenched fingers, and shuts her eyes so she can take slow, deep breaths. She counts as she does it. In her mind she goes through the routine of opening the bar, pictures herself taking down the chairs and wiping down the counters. It's oddly relaxing, monotonous and safe, a thing she does almost every day, far away from here.

"I didn't know you had a brother," Jace says eventually.

Maia tips her head back against the closed door but does not release Jace. "He was an asshole. He tortured me."

"Here?"

She nods. "He would lock me in. Here. The bottom cabinet in the kitchen, one time. Even in the attic." She could hear things skitter in the dark, or thought she could; she was too little to reach the light. The air always got too close and hot, like now.

There's a pause. "Yeah," Jace says. "I got locked up a lot."

Maia opens her eyes and surveys him for a long moment. "Want to see my bedroom?"

 

 

 

Maia takes Jace up the creaking staircase. Her feet remember which ones to skip even if she thought her brain had dispensed with the information. Her room was at the back of the house at the end of the short hallway with its puke green carpet, which she sees has not changed. She doesn't try Daniel's door or her parents', ignoring temptation as she leads Jace to the smallest of the three bedrooms.

She's surprised it's still standing.

In fact, it's like time has stopped, something out of _Great Expectations_. The paint job Maia started when she was fourteen remains unfinished, leaving half the room an aging nursery yellow and the other a violent purple. Her mirror still has her name on it. Did they think she would come home, or did they just close the door on their two vanished children and forget the rooms ever existed?

Jace sits on her bed and then cranes his head back so he can look at the glow in the dark stars affixed to her ceiling. "Izzy always wanted those," he says. "Who's Jordan?"

Maia freezes, but she follows his gaze up to where she had once written Jordan's name on the biggest, most central star. She sits next to Jace, tilting back too. "Another asshole," she says.

"No shortage of 'em." Jace's eyes roam the room before they land on her. He seems incongruously relaxed and friendly, but maybe it's to make up for the fact that she is neither right now. "I thought you were going to turn in the closet. Your eyes were green."

"You would've been the first to go if I did."

The corner of Jace's mouth twitches. "Promises, promises."

"I never brought a boy up here, you know," Maia tells him. "I was more of a make out in the park kind of girl."

He smiles and it's so sweet that Maia wonders if he's thinking about the other girl she was, the one with long hair and an attitude, who hadn't quite learned her lesson about trusting people. A girl who was unhappy at home but whose brother was still alive, which meant her parents still had life in them. A girl who was falling in love. 

Maia's eyes prickle but it's not for Daniel or her mother, it's for her, the her she left here without thinking twice. Jace murmurs a soft _hey_ as he sits up and puts his hand on her cheek, thumb against a damp cheekbone. Maia kisses him, lips parted, and he kisses her back without hesitation. His hand slips into her hair and they fall back against dusty sheets no one has touched since Maia neglected to make her bed one last time. Maia's fingers scrabble against his neck and his chest; she arches up into him until she very abruptly pushes him away.

She sits up, sucking in air, and shakes her head. "Simon," she says.

Jace agrees with a nod, his fingertips at his mouth. "Clary," he says.

They exchange weak half-smiles and look away.

"I don't want to go back down." More than anything, Maia realizes, she does not want to be here. It's not just hard or uncomfortable, it's that this place is a mausoleum and there is nothing left for her to take from it. Her stomach knots. "Does it make me a bad person that I can't — that I don't —"

Jace waits until it's clear that she doesn't know how to finish that thought before he says, "Your family is in New York. You're allowed to pick the ones you want."

"I know," she says, but that guilt tears at her again, the feeling that she was a bad daughter who did not do more for two people who had just lost their son because she was bitter and felt unloved. There must have been times growing up that were good, but when Maia thinks about it she can only come up with sour memories. They never even came after her. And her dad had her number.

Jace stands and goes to the window, jimmying it open with his stele and wincing carefully as he does so. He sticks his head out and looks down before turning back to her. "Would you ever have come back? Without the extenuating circumstances."

"No," Maia says, immediate and absolute. Never. 

"Then I say let's take the drop and make a run for it." 

She gets up too so she can have a look, but she'd taken this escape route many times before. The flat roof to the tree and down to the grass. It was the one she took the last day, too.

"Fuck it," Maia says. She wraps her hands around the window frame and pushes herself out.


End file.
